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Massive fire at high rise flats in London


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7 minutes ago, red23 said:

So as a homeowner if my Hotpoint fridge freezer i have combusts will i get a new £3 million pound house and a £200k cheque through my door?

Air bed doon the local community centre more like.

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1 minute ago, whiskychimp said:

I'd disagree. 

:lol:

The more I read about this cladding catastrophe, the more angry and dumbfounded I get in equal measure.

I work in the building trade, and I am baffled (to put it mildly) that those who make the building regulations could have allowed this to happen. It beggars belief. Rather naively I assumed that building regs would have banned this type of construction. In fact, why would a company make a product that was such a fire risk?

The last place I worked the last 3 jobs I was involved in had cladding to high rise buildings (among a lot of other things) - 2 in England and 1 in Gibraltar. We just followed the spec references, I have no idea whether the stuff specified was fire resistant or not. Maybe the stuff in Gibraltar was, but for all I know the might use English building regs.

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2 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

:lol:

The more I read about this cladding catastrophe, the more angry and dumbfounded I get in equal measure.

I work in the building trade, and I am baffled (to put it mildly) that those who make the building regulations could have allowed this to happen. It beggars belief. Rather naively I assumed that building regs would have banned this type of construction. In fact, why would a company make a product that was such a fire risk?

The last place I worked the last 3 jobs I was involved in had cladding to high rise buildings (among a lot of other things) - 2 in England and 1 in Gibraltar. We just followed the spec references, I have no idea whether the stuff specified was fire resistant or not. Maybe the stuff in Gibraltar was, but for all I know the might use English building regs.

If we no longer have a testing agency of our own(?), you'd think someone would have the job of looking at new regulations in other countries, and a process for deciding whether they were justified or not. Britain has a much better record on fire safety than America, and serious tower block fires are incredibly rare, so maybe our authorities just got complacent. It all seems criminally stupid though, I can understand the fitters just going by the regs but the manufacturers have no excuse, and the authorities need to answer for their negligence. Apologies won't do. This isn't a witch hunt for a scapegoat after an accident, there were individuals and institutions directly responsible for those deaths.

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How much is it going to cost the local councils to move people from their homes and rehouse them whilst the remedial works are carried out? When the work was originally carried out, the residents would have still been in their flats. I bet it would be far cheaper for the councils to let the residents move back in whilst the new work is undertaken. It would then be cheaper for the council to put a temporary building at each affected tower block and keep a fire engine on site until the works are finished. Lucky if it would cost them 20k per week to cover the cost of the firemens wages and rental of the fire engine at each site. If its much more than that then somebody is taking the piss.

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17 minutes ago, supermik said:

How much is it going to cost the local councils to move people from their homes and rehouse them whilst the remedial works are carried out? When the work was originally carried out, the residents would have still been in their flats. I bet it would be far cheaper for the councils to let the residents move back in whilst the new work is undertaken. It would then be cheaper for the council to put a temporary building at each affected tower block and keep a fire engine on site until the works are finished. Lucky if it would cost them 20k per week to cover the cost of the firemens wages and rental of the fire engine at each site. If its much more than that then somebody is taking the piss.

Panicky councillors worried about getting blamed for an incredibly small chance of another fire while the work's getting done. Risk assessment gone mad when it's too late.

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Panicky councillors worried about getting blamed for an incredibly small chance of another fire while the work's getting done. Risk assessment gone mad when it's too late.


It really is.

I'd be one of the many families who refused and just stayed put.

Surely they could take precautions. Fire extinguisher in every house. Even a volunteer on patrol through the night?

The chaos caused by this decision is ludicrous.
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8 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

 


It really is.

I'd be one of the many families who refused and just stayed put.

Surely they could take precautions. Fire extinguisher in every house. Even a volunteer on patrol through the night?

The chaos caused by this decision is ludicrous.

 

Your suggestions would be even cheaper than mine. Someone on patrol could alert the emergency services in an instant if they had a direct number to the fire station.

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35 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Panicky councillors worried about getting blamed for an incredibly small chance of another fire while the work's getting done. Risk assessment gone mad when it's too late.

You just can't leave people in there. A fire and it's on your consicence forever. 

Though ironically, I'll bet they didnt do a fire risk assessment on the hotels they've moved people to.

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5 minutes ago, whiskychimp said:

You just can't leave people in there. A fire and it's on your consicence forever. 

Though ironically, I'll bet they didnt do a fire risk assessment on the hotels they've moved people to.

They should have thought of that before they approved the cladding and cut the maintenance budget. They'd save save more lives by banning golf for a month in case of lightning, probably.

Edited by welshbairn
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5 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

If the building regs allow it, suppliers, designers and contractors will use it. Not a lot of morals further up the food chain in construction/building (bottom line is everything in housing). There are plenty test houses out there (no idea if this product was BBA approved) but it comes down to whether the regs allowed it as the test houses will test to pass/fail criterion. Interesting to see how the contract worked on the renovation. Any links to this?

Whether flammable material is allowed by the building regs or not, you can always spec higher/better. There is no excuse for covering a building in what was basically solid petrol and hoping nobody would ever drop a match on it.

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6 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

They should have thought of that before they approved the cladding and cut the maintenance budget. They'd save save more lives by banning golf for a month in case of lightning, probably.

I agree but that's very much, " if your aunty had baws....."

Now its done, they have to move people out. 

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9 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

If the building regs allow it, suppliers, designers and contractors will use it. Not a lot of morals further up the food chain in construction/building (bottom line is everything in housing). There are plenty test houses out there (no idea if this product was BBA approved) but it comes down to whether the regs allowed it as the test houses will test to pass/fail criterion. Interesting to see how the contract worked on the renovation. Any links to this?

I just find it unbelievable that methods of cladding a tower block in Britain haven't been tested for flammability. You would have thought a new product coming on the market wouldn't be legal until it had been passed. Maybe the system had been tested in a lab, but without a perfect storm of ambient temperature, wind conditions and exploding fridge on the 4th floor with the window open. Really shit when the system had been banned everywhere else though.

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I agree but that's very much, " if your aunty had baws....."
Now its done, they have to move people out. 


They really, really don't.

This smacks of councillors absolutely shiting themselves.

Take extra precautions, and get the cladding off asap. Done.
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2 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

 


Sadly standards are all over the place across Europe and the world. You would think best practice would easily transfer from country to country but having seen standards bodies in action, no fucker will agree on anything for months/years. There's a lot of politics played out also and it does take an incident like this to make the technical professionals on the standards committees realise things have to change. Quite often, suppliers of materials wangle there way on to such committees which in my mind is wrong, but in some cases not wholly avoidable.

 

Hopefully the Public Enquiry will have the right people running it, scope and independence, and be fairly quick. This seems like such a simple f**k up that it shouldn't take too long after the police have dealt with the criminal enquiry. How hard can it be?

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22 hours ago, whiskychimp said:

The 2009 fire wasnt anything to do with cladding, but it was 2006 the Camden flats were clad.

Yes but a lot of what went wrong in 2009 appears to have went wrong here.

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